Markets Impacted:

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What you need to know:

Effective Monday, January 3, 2011, The NASDAQ Stock Market® (NASDAQ®) will update the Investor Support Program (ISP) rules, subject to filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Along with the updates announced in Equity Trader Alert #2010-83, NASDAQ will also update routing fees, effective Monday, January 3, 2011, subject to filing with the SEC.

How is the ISP changing?

Effective Monday, January 3, 2011, NASDAQ will update the ISP rules to reflect the following changes, subject to filing with the SEC:

Any firm that did not add liquidity in August 2010 will be deemed to have added an average of 35,000,000 shares per day during that month for purposes of calculating that firm’s August baseline.

A firm’s August baseline will include the orders that it sent to NASDAQ directly plus the orders that it sent to NASDAQ indirectly via another party with little or no substantive intermediation by such other party (Indirect Order Flow). NASDAQ will determine substantive intermediation by assessing whether such other party sending Indirect Order Flow to NASDAQ had little or no discretion in selecting key order attributes such as symbol, price, size and time-in-force.

Participating firms must certify their August baseline volume, including the amount of Indirect Order Flow that they sent to NASDAQ.1 Contact NASDAQ OMX Subscriber Services for more information. Once a month, NASDAQ may request certification regarding compliance with other parts of the ISP program.

The ISP credit will apply only to executions at prices at or above $1.00 per share.

How are routing fees changing?

Effective Monday, January 3, 2011, NASDAQ has updated its pass-through fees to route to NYSE to reflect NYSE’s pricing change, as follows:

The rebate for liquidity added to NYSE will be $0.0015 per share.

The fee for MOPP orders and directed Intermarket Sweep Orders (ISO) will be $0.0025 per share.

The fee for Non-ISO ISNY orders for firms that add less than 35 million shares (based on average daily shares of liquidity per month) will be $0.0025 per share.

The fee for Non-ISO ISNY orders for firms that add 35 million shares or more (based on average daily shares of liquidity per month) will be $0.0024 per share.

The fee for all routing strategies that check the NASDAQ book and Directed Orders will be $0.0023 per share.

The fee to route to NYSE using the SAVE and TFTY routing strategies will be $0.0022. Firms should note that this rate has been updated since the posting of Equity Trader Alert #2010-83 to reflect NYSE’s pricing change.

1 Firms must identify their ISP ports no later than Friday, January 7, 2011, to participate in the ISP for the month of January. For inclusion in the program going forward beginning in February, firms must identify their ports no later than the first trading day of the month.

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